Elections looming

With the European Union elections a few weeks away, besides the local Council elections on the same day, I take you back today to 1971, when a big election took place, with the Labor Party replacing the Nationalist Party, and eventually reigning for another 16 years. Back then, they didn’t have billboards or Facebook or the Internet to advertise. So posters were the most popular way of canvassing and letting people know who was running for the 55 seats that formed the Parliament back then. This photo shows a building covered with posters, mostly of the two leaders, Dom Mintoff the Labor Party leader, who would become Prime Minster, and George Borg Olivier, the opposition leader who was Prime Minister a few times in the 1950s and all through he 1960s, being the father of Independence, which Malta gained in 1964. Many of these posters would be seen on every conceivable wall available in towns and villages. Corner meetings as well as huge mass meetings were held in the month leading to the election. This particular building was the parcel Post Office in Valletta, the capital city, and was taken down a few years ago. In its place here is a small square with a bronze statue of the Grandmaster La Vallette, for whom the capital city was named.